Syracuse administration discusses funding for neglected library

The biggest, most populated library is a crucial feature on every college campus. Students need it as a work haven. Professors need it as a resource. Prospective students need to be impressed by it on tours.

At Syracuse University, E.S. Bird Library is none of the above. According to the University Senate’s Library Committee, among other problems, Bird has outdated furniture, slow computers, and minimal collections of academic resources like maps and journals.

At the senate’s Jan. 15 meeting, Deborah Pellow, the head of the Library Committee, compared SU’s library funding to 13 other private research universities. The list revealed that SU falls far behind other private research universities like Cornell, Duke and Northwestern in library funding. While Cornell topped the list with approximately $44 million allocated to its libraries, SU bottomed it out with only about $18 million given to its libraries according to numbers from 2009-10.

By Jarrad Saffren

The entrance to the E.S. Bird Library

At the meeting, Pellow said the library suffered from “egregious neglect” over the past 10 years under the administration of former SU chancellor Nancy Cantor.

“I believe that under Cantor’s administration, the focus and the energy, money or not money, was on the community, not the university,” she said in a Feb. 6 article in The Daily Orange.

As Pellow explains, SU is fortunate that new chancellor Kent Syverud wants to make improving Bird Library a priority and increase its funding.

At the meeting, Syverud expressed a strong desire to put more money towards Bird Library as soon as possible. He called the debate over the issue “a normal, healthy way to proceed in academia.”

“I think it’s fabulous we have a chancellor who cares about the library,” Pellow told the Orange. “It’s better for (faculty), it’s better for students and it’s better for the university. It will help the university in untold ways.”

Jarrad Saffren is a senior at Syracuse University, where he is the editorial editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Orange.